#daythirtysix

I woke up like this - crappy. 

Haha, putting a morbid twist on Beyonce doesn’t work that well, huh? In all seriousness, my rising wasn’t that bad. I actually got close to 9 hours of sleep and only woke up twice to have a delightful coughing fit. 

My throat still felt pretty hoarse even after drinking water when I woke up in the middle of the night. The joys of having gastritis: the stomach acid seeping through my ruined esophagus and into my throat sucks up all the moisture in my mouth. 

And I thought having ‘dry mouth’ while I was still on antidepressants was hard to live with...

On the plus side, I didn’t have a single sneezing fit while I was at work. Maybe whatever illness I picked up two weeks ago is finally losing traction. I’m sneezing right now after coming home, but I will enjoy the small victories. 

Work was fine, pretty chilled in parts. I let three of my classes have ‘juice parties’ since they finished their first assessment last week while my fourth class had theirs yesterday. I even bought each of my students candy and chocolate. It feels nice having enough money again to splurge on other people, especially my students. Almost all of my monthly pay cheques in the past 6 months had gone to X and her ridiculous whims; I felt so trapped for the longest time. I can’t believe I let someone I loved use and abuse me so much. 

My students were pretty noisy and annoying all day and I finally snapped with my sixth graders when they would shut up after I repeatedly tried to get them to calm down and listen to me. So I dragged them outside into the hallway twice: once to do Jumping Jacks and then to hold their hands above their heads for a minute the second time for one minute. I made them re-start whenever they didn’t listen or follow my instructions to show them that I meant business. 

And after that - blissful silence for 10 minutes before the bell rang while I let them watch ‘Shazam’. 

It feels to get my way, even in these small situations. As dumb as it sounds, it makes me think that just maybe, I can take control of my life again after all the turmoil I’ve experienced in recent times. 

I’ve been re-reading a lot of my old fanfictions that I wrote years ago, all the way up last year. I took a hiatus from creative writing after X got ‘sick’; my heart just wasn’t in it during that time. A part of me is itching to get back into it; I seem to do my best work when I’m broken-hearted and miserable. But I don’t have any tangible ideas, only a desperate urge to write about something and everything. 

Anyway, I often re-read the comments that people have left on my stories to give me an ego boost and I came across a few from X. We first met online when she read some of my fanfics about random K-pop idols. 

Yes, I know, I like Korean pop music and it’s kinda embarassing. In my defence, the music is catchy and the idols are hot af. What else would’ve inspired me to write? 

But back to me and X. 

She was what you might call a ‘fanfic groupie’ of mine minus the sex. She liked my stories and she commented on lots of them over the years. But I didn’t notice her at first since I was still licking my wounds over my break-up with KA, who I had met in similar fashion. 

Yes, that’s right, I dated two of my fanfic groupies and both relationships fell apart. I’m beginning to see a pattern here. 

Anyway, I read through some of X’s old comments and they almost made me smile. This is mainly because I felt like I was reading a different person’s comments and not that of my ex-girlfriend. Some of her comments were before we dated and some of them were after we started dating. But all of them are the same: sweet, adoring and kind. I don’t care so much about the ‘adoration’ part, but I do miss X’s kindness and her sincerity. 

I miss everything I had before, especially the writing part. I always dreamed that I would one day became a world famous novelist like J.K. Rowling. Reading Harry Potter in my teens got me through some dark days and I always wanted my writing to do the same for other people. But that ‘million dollar idea’ that will land me a Hollywood movie deal as well is eluding me so far. Writing’s one of the few gifts that I have which makes me feel special and the spark is just gone these days. 

I hope I can write again soon, it might lift me out of this depressing hole that I’ve dug for myself lately. 

I started typing my blog entry while waiting for some bread that I ordered to arrive. Did you know that you can order some food items from online stores in China that will deliver to your home within an hour? I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before, but China is kind of fucking cool that way! I’m so addicted to online shopping. Maybe I could making shopping my new significant other instead of an actual person...

Alright, no more talking nonsense. I need to go to the gym and hate every bit of exercise I’m about to engage in. I haven’t binged Netflix in a while, maybe I’ll do that tonight. There are a couple of shows with new seasons I’d like to catch on. Plus, there’s a new Chinese drama that C recommended to me I’d like to check out. 

I have plans with D tomorrow to celebrate her birthday in the evening. I hope the present I ordered for her gets delivered to my work tomorrow. Since I’m gonna meet her, I might not have time to exercise tomorrow evening. So I’ll put my gym clothes into my work bag and take it to school tomorrow. I’m only teaching two classes anyway, so I have time to slip away for 20-30 minutes to exercise and then do the rest of my work at my desk. 

When I felt down last night about X, I texted K and told her about it. She told me to try and take it one day at a time. She’s right, I need to give myself time to heal. No one who’s ever had a broken heart in the history of broken hearts has ever recovered from that hot mess in record time. 

I’ll only know I can breathe easily again after I’ve come up for air and swum back to shore. 

I’ve thought of a few stages of post break-ups that I’ve summarised into the 5 D’s which I seem to have gone through so far: 

Stage 1 - Disbelief

Stage 2 - Distraction

Stage 3 - Debauchery

Stage 4 - Depression

Stage 5 - Departure

I feel certain that I’ll amend the names of some of the stages or switch the stages around at a later time. But for right now, these seem to fit my situation well, especially stage 4.